


Kyber

by Cassiopaya



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: "Archeology", Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Doctor Aphra would approve, First Order recruitment, Gen, Hux is 26, Inspired by Indiana Jones, No radar technicians were harmed in the writing of this fic, POV Third Person Limited, Pre-TFA, Rey is 11, Rey's parents are in a pauper's grave, Strangers to Friends, Unkar Plutt is the absolute worst, wage slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 16:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21668365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassiopaya/pseuds/Cassiopaya
Summary: A younger Hux searches for Imperial intelligence lost to the First Order in an abandoned and shelled research facility on Jakku.  A younger Rey is acquired as a guide to the desert landscape and scavenging techniques of Jakku.  Hux sees an opportunity for recruitment of an exceptional talent.  Rey is less than thrilled at minding an off-worlder who will likely get them both killed.
Relationships: Armitage Hux & Rey
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

Hux first became aware of an incongruity, not by sight, but by sound. A girl’s voice, her elocution purely Imperial. Hers was a voice he could slide down and, in doing so, find himself standing among confabulating highborn ladies in the salon of an Imperial matron. It was a cadence he had not heard since he was five and sneaking a listen out side of the kitchen door. But he was on Jakku and there were no tinkling chandeliers here to provide soft ambient lighting for patrons in what passed for a cantina in a little pisshole such as Niima Outpost. 

He caught a glimpse of her from his shaded vantage point. She dressed the part of a local in coarse clothes; regardless Hux was struck with a visceral recognition about her. Perhaps it was the turn of her head when she glanced towards the water depot or the flash of her throat as she took a breath. Hux continued to fan himself as a matter of course with his felt hat as he observed her standing perfectly still in the queue for the junk dealer. She was small and he did not know if it was due to age or to a genetic proclivity towards petiteness. Hux observed there was nothing fragile about her; her quarterstaff was solid and well used.

The girl disappeared into the shade under the junk dealer’s awning and when she came out again Hux had left the cantina. Hux was not on Jakku to wonder over a girl with a posh accent, he was here on a scavenger hunt to see how well the Imperial regime had destroyed its research facility in the Carbon Ridge. He had a feeling he would find something there, something important that would fill in the critical gap of knowledge on the relationship between kyber crystals and stars.

* * *

A man stood just behind her, looking over her shoulder as she soldered wires about her little makeshift device at the table. The only word Rey could use to describe him was  _ crisp _ . She could see his boots out of the corner of her eye, the leather smooth with a sheen. His deliberate manner of walking into her space revealed his smooth clothes were clean in a way that bespoke newness as well. She imagined even his voice would be perfectly summed up by the word, if she ever heard him speak. He watched her work for some time and when he sensed she was nearly done he encroached further on her space.

“It’s not for sale,” Rey told the man without looking at him, removing her safety goggles now that she was finished.

“I’m not interested in buying, simply interested,” he replied. His speech  _ was _ crisp. 

“I’m not for sale either.” Rey was firm, lest he get the wrong idea and require more violent methods of refusal. Rey turned to look at him and found she had to look up at him: pressed pants tucked into new boots, a utility belt hung with all types of shiny new equipment, a finely women shirt tucked that was tucked in. She blinked when she got to his head. Rey could not tell what color his eyes were but the hair under his hat was a striking copper she had never seen on a human before. She wondered if he was human or just something near it. She took in his space-pale face blistered with sunburn and his cool gaze. His expression did not reveal displeasure with her rejection.

“Of course not.” He indicated her work with a tilt of his head. “You’re very clever.”

“Yes, I am,” Rey replied without pause. 

He quirked a small smile then, unperturbed by her self-assuredness. “Who taught you how to do this?” 

This off-worlder’s interest was a nuisance. Rey was not interested – no matter how crisply he spoke.

“I taught myself,” she told him and she couldn’t tell whether he believed her or not. Not that she cared one way or the other, so long as he would leave her to her business. Rey tidied up her station, placing her supplies into her bag. She needed this cobbled-together part to get her speeder working long distance again. Rey could not tell if the man knew she had made something out of incompatible parts or if he was simply attempting to engage her for his own amusement.

“So you’re an autodidact,” he said. Rey did not recognise the word. 

“No, I’m human. Is that what you are? An Autodidact?” She was curious about this new species - did they all have hair the color of copper wire like this man?

His neutral expression downturned into a frown as though Rey had just told him a particularly pithy pun. Then a strangled huff of laughter puffed out of him and he barely managed to contain a full on guffawing. Rey didn’t believe this man to be as nonchalant and innocuous as he seemed and now he was laughing at her, though she didn’t know why as she scowled at him.

“Oh. Ah-ha, no. I am also human, although you might call me an autodidact,” he paused, “I have had to teach myself many things as well.” 

Rey was embarrassed at her own ignorance and wanted to end this encounter. Sentient species in range of the conversation had mostly stopped in their labors to watch. She hated the scrutiny.

“I saw you trade rations for a place at this workstation. What are you making?” Rey catalogued his off-world vocabulary as military. She could toss something military in his face to get him to shut up and stop asking her questions.

“That’s classified.” 

Rey meant it to be a death note in the conversation, but the sudden intensity behind the man’s eyes told her otherwise. He was thinking intently, puzzling her out. She wasn’t going to stick around and wait for him to figure her out. Rey walked out of the workshop with her staff as fast as she could without running and made her way to the water depot.

* * *

Armitage was usually quite good with children, but this encounter had not gone at all as he expected. The girl might sound like an Imperial, but she was just as feral as Phasma had been on Parnassos. This bit of intelligence made Hux rethink his next approach. Brendol would have sneered at a Hux cajoling when he did not need to, but Armitage was not his father. He would not pick up this child kicking and screaming and drag her to the First Order.

He had been on his way to see Unkar Plutt about a guide when he had seen the girl again negotiating entrance to the canopied workshop patrolled by guards. Hux had found out in the cantina that everything in Niima Outpost went through Plutt and his credits had not been accepted. Food was the currency here, and only Plutt would accept credits.

Armitage’s dislike of Unkar Plutt had been instantaneous; the thickness of the Crolute’s body and his squinting frowning face reminded him too much of his father, who overindulged everyone else while withholding everything from him. It had been nearly a decade after his death and Hux was still dismayed at the degree to which the old man haunted him.

The feeling only got worse as the Crolute opened his mouth and responded to Armitage’s request, with credits, for a reliable guide. “I own all the scavengers here, take your pick of the ones inside the workshop.” Plutt offered no preference for one or the other when Hux pressed. “One is just as good as any other. They only eat if they work, the lazy ones are already dead.” The Crolute laughed and commanded one of his guards to take him to the workshop.

Once inside, he had seen the girl again among many others. They had each spent a portion of their rations for the use of the space and its amenities. Armitage was walked around and looked at each of them in turn. At last he came to the girl and was able to look at her more closely. She knew what she was doing even if he didn’t - not exactly. Hux had encountered radar technicians who knew less; the skill she displayed in her soldering was impressive. He could also see that her small hands were well equipped for work and that she had the dexterity to work with fine materials. Her small size would also make her excellent for crawling into tight spaces and traversing across potentially unstable or weak catwalks.

Hux wasn’t sure how to catch up with her without looking like he was chasing her down. He imagined going to Unkar Plutt and having her dragged before him and commanded to work for him by the Crolute would be absolutely disastrous. Hux returned to Plutt and told him he had found a creature of interest and wanted to know how to proceed in order to get to work for him. The Crolute looked at him like he was an imbecile. “They like food,” Unkar said deliberately, as though Hux didn’t speak fluent Basic.

“Indeed,” Hux acknowledged, “But it seems as though I have spooked this child.” Unkar grunted like he was swallowing liquid.

“You mean the girl. She’s a slippery one alright. I will bring her here. She knows her place and she will work.”

“No. That’s quite all right.” This was quickly turning into the scenario that Hux had explicitly wished to avoid.

“You have already paid for her,” Plutt reminded him and seemed to remind him without saying that he didn’t offer refunds and if the girl didn’t work it was clearly Hux’s fault.

“I am aware,” Armitage answered tearsely.

“Then pick another from the workshop. It makes no difference.”

“The child is the size and skill level to meet my parameters,” Hux rebutted, growing tired of the Crolute’s stinginess to work with him on this. “I should very much like her to work for me without a lot of fuss involved.” Hux dearly hoped the Crolute picked up on the insinuation that he would be the one causing the fuss.

“She will be back tomorrow. She must come if she wants to eat. She does not have portions enough for two days.” Hux told him he would be back on the morrow to secure the girl’s work. Unkar shrugged and let the matter rest.

Armitage returned to the utaliarian shuttle he had arrived in, parked next to ships in various stages of disrepair and dismantling, and fingered through his rations to see what might pique the interest of a child who ate nothing but insta-bread.


	2. Serendipitous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey learns that her labor has been sold. Plutt is an absolute monster. Hux lays a foundation for trust building with Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there are parts of this chapter where Rey reacts to having her labor sold badly, because Jakku is a bad place where bad things happen. She's afraid of what every girl in her situation fears and she has some thoughts on how to remedy the situation. Trigger Warnings for allusions to sexual assault and murder.

Hux spent the previous evening on his datapad after selecting a hot chocolate flavored ration bar for the scavenger girl. The bar really didn’t taste anything like hot chocolate, more like a chalky grain-based solidified paste, but for someone who had nothing to compare it to it might be a delicious alternative to insta-bread.

The secret research facility at Carbon Ridge has been so secretive that records of exactly where it had been did not exist. Hux had to pour through various extant Imperial reports to cross reference locations for the purpose of scouting possible entry points. Armitage was certain that with boots on the ground he could examine the striations in the rock formations and identify bombardments that left skree fields in the valley. Those would be the first places to explore for possible entrance points or evidence of ruptured infrastructure.

Hux knew proceeding would be far more efficient if he found the ** _Interrogator_ ** first. This was the _ Imperial _-class Star Destroyer that had received orders to protect the research facility at all cost or to destroy it in the face of inescapable defeat. Records might be pulled from its black box, indicating maneuvers to protect as well as targeting systems engaged to destroy. This knowledge, if it could be retrieved, would be invaluable.

It had been a long time since Hux had been on Jakku and his memories of the planet were mostly unpleasant. Rax’s base and the Observatory were two terrifying locations from his childhood. He had trekked from one to the other with a hoard of murder orphans in the heat and the sun laboring under the certainty he was going to die in some awful way. 

Armitage had never been to Carbon Ridge as a child and had not even known of its existence before the age of twenty. The Graveyard of Giants hadn’t existed then, neither had Niima Outpost. Although Niima the Hutt was now long gone, she had set the precedence for slavery on Jakku with the Crolute as her apparent inheritor. The current state of affairs on Jakku reinforced the crimes of the Republic in Hux’s mind.

Hux was not looking forward to going back out into the desert. He had slathered on solarblock, worn a hat, and stayed exclusively in the shade whenever possible, but his skin had burned under the unforgiving sun. The bridge of his nose was red and aching hot. Armitage was certain he would have blisters all over his face by the end of this expedition.

Needs being what they were, Hux ventured outside the climate controlled interior of his shuttle and plodded through the loose sand to Plutt’s pavilion. He had no idea how long he was to wait for the girl to show up. Armitage had patience to spare. Unkar barely acknowledged Hux’s arrival with a glance and went about assessing the pieces scavengers brought to him. Armitage watched the proceedings critically. The junk boss sized up the scavengers just as much as the junk itself. He dealt out “portions” with less regard for the parts as for the state of the scavengers. What might seem as arbitrary pay for alike pieces were calculated decisions. Just how much could he withhold to keep them hungry, to keep them working, and not a calorie more? Hux might have admired the Crolute’s precision as a purser if his exploitation were not at the cost of the whole enterprise’s advancement. Individual advancement at organizational expense was something he found abhorrent.

* * *

Rey balked at the sight of the tall, crisp man from yesterday standing under Plutt’s pavilion. She vacillated between turning back and holding still, but then realized he had already seen her and she was not afraid of him. Rey held tight to her staff, stabbing the sand with it as she pushed forward. Rey lined up behind the other scavengers and glared at the man. He had a purpose, he was waiting, and Rey had a bad feeling he was waiting for her.

The line moved, Plutt dealing out portions, and each step brought her closer to the copper haired autodidact. He was alone and Plutt’s thugs did not seem to be coludding with him; they kept their eyes on the pickings and the people beyond the pavilion in the outpost. Others got in line behind Rey, they were just scavengers like her. Rey tried not to breathe hard when it was her turn before Plutt, she didn’t want anyone to know her empty stomach was churning with bile. Rey would not look at the man now that she was this close, but she kept the corner of her eye on him.

One hand clutched her staff, the other carefully placed her pack on Plutt’s counter. Rey had to stand on her tip-toes to reach, but it was best to be careful with what she was carrying. Opening the flap of the bag revealed a strange kind of sandstone crusted over a blob of semi-exposed chrome-like metal.

The Crolute gave an interested gurgle in the back of his throat. “Spilled Rhydonium. A good find. “ Plutt turned his attention to the redhead as he slipped on hazard gloves and plucked the Rhydonium from Rey’s pack, “You have a good eye, Spacer, I should charge you more for this girl’s work.” Rey stopped breathing. What did Plutt mean?

“Next!” he called out, but he’d given Rey no portions. That much Rhydonium should be worth at least five portions! The scavengers behind her were muttering, wondering if they would meet the same caprice at the concession stand when it was their turn.

“What about my portions?!”

Plutt pushed her empty bag off his counter as he looked Rey straight in the eye, “This Spacer has already paid for your labor. You’ll get your portions from him from now on. Next!”

“What?!” Rey’s pack flopped onto the floor, her eyes darted to the man standing next to the counter. He looked just as aghast at the turn of events as she. Of course Plutt hadn’t told him he’d need to feed her. He might not even have anything for her to eat!

“Do I have to?” Rey wasn’t ashamed at the petulant tone in her voice. Plutt waived her away from his window, “NEXT!”

Rey snatched her bag off the floor and she thrust herself up as high as her tip-toes would take her, trying to lean into Plutt’s window, “I don’t want to work for him, I want my portions!” The Crolute stared at her without expression as he lowered the transparisteel and then turned away, waiting until she went away. “I WANT MY PORTIONS!” Rey screamed, smacking her staff against the counter and then kicking the wall of the concession stand. 

Two thugs immediately grabbed her by the shoulders, picking her up and throwing her down in front of the Spacer with the sunburned face. Rey screamed, inarticulate with fury, and when she looked up at the man he had schooled his features into a neutral expression. He crouched down in front of her, offering his hand palm up. Breathing hard, Rey told herself not to cry, not to waste water.

“This did not go at all as I expected, but perhaps that was my fault for expecting a civilized exchange,” the man was offering her something as he spoke softly to her. His hand held a glossy wrapper that was long and vaguely rectilinear. Rey held her breath. He had something to eat, he was offering it to her. Should she take it? Her heart was beating so hard she could feel it reverberate in every hollow place inside of her.

The man hadn’t grabbed her or even tried to touch her. He was offering something to eat, he had not thrown it down at her but crouched down to where she was on the floor. Rey felt all eyes on Niima Outpost looking at the spectacle of the scavenger whose labor had been sold to the spacer, throwing a tantrum like a child. Should she take it?

“Here,” he said, “take it, you’ve earned it - and more.” Rey was shaking, looking at the sunburned face, looking for ill intentions. She reached out a trembling hand to snatch at the food bar, her fingertips brushing against his palm. This elicited no reaction. He didn’t snatch his hand back or change his expression. Rey clutched the glossy wrapper to her chest. 

Rey nodded at the man, incapable of speech, but she thought quickly. If he tried to hurt her, she’d kill him. She’d kill him and hide his body in the dunes. She’d tell Plutt that her work for the Spacer was done. Things would go back to normal. She stood up and so did he. He was so tall, but he was slender. If he tried to hurt her, she’d kill him.

Plutt had opened the concession stand again, calling out for the next scavenger in line and all eyes went back to their own business.

“I’m going to Carbon Ridge and I have a need for your talents,” he paused. “My name is Hux.”

“There’s nothing but Dead-enders in Carbon Ridge,” Rey told him, but she didn’t tell him her name. The man who called himself Hux nodded as though he already knew about the dangers of Carbon Ridge.

“You should eat that before it melts any further.” Rey’s hand had been clutching the wrapped bar so tightly that she was deforming its shape. She opened her hand to look at what kind of portion it was. “What’s ‘hot chocolate’?”

“It’s good.” Hux, if that was his true name, smiled in a bemused manner, perhaps he didn’t know what “hot chocolate” was either. 

“Do you have your supplies already - to go to Carbon Ridge and come back?” Rey fiddled with the wrapper. Hux might be taking them both to their death if he didn’t have enough water, if he didn’t know about the nightwatcher worms, or the ripper-raptors, or the steelpeckers.

“Before we go to Carbon Ridge,” Hux explained, “I need to salvage the ** _Interrogator’s_ ** black box.” 

Rey had opened the wrapper and to her disappointment the “hot chocolate” looked like a processed bar of feces. She wondered if it was spicy.

“I know where the ** _Interrogator_ ** is,” Rey said, sniffing the portion bar, “it’s not too far from the **Hellhound** , but I doubt you’ll find any black box. The ** _Interrogator_ ** was picked clean a long time ago.”

“The **Hellhound**?” Hux asked.

“Well, the **Hellhound II**. I don’t know what happened to the first one. It’s an AT-AT.”

“Serendipitous,” Hux muttered to himself. Rey didn’t know that curse word, but she liked the way it rolled off his tongue.

“Serendipitous,” Rey repeated, then bit into the “hot chocolate” bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you kindly for reading. If you enjoyed this chapter, please leave me a comment. If you have any questions, please feel free to start a dialogue in the comments.
> 
> Stay Safe, Stay Home, Wash Your Hands, and Leave Comments on Fanfiction!

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was very different when I first started it three years ago. It was inspired by Rogue One material and back then I don't even think we knew that Hux's first name was Armitage. I wrote the first chapter, posted it on FF.Net, and then didn't touch it. When I did get inspired to start reworking this I had no idea that I hadn't touched it in three years. This was originally a Reyux romance fic, but going back to it I grew uncomfortable with the romance and decided to chuck it out entirely. Now with the romance gone I could tell a story that was not in service of it and that gave me a lot more freedom. I get to build a legit relationship between two characters with friendship as the outcome. With more background information on Hux, I decided to place this in the time between Hux having his father killed (when he was 16 according to the Phasma novel) and Kylo Ren's arrival (when he was 29). I choose to make Hux 26, which would make Rey 11. Think of it in the same terms as Qui-Gon Jinn stumbling across Anakin Skywalker and recruiting him into the Jedi.


End file.
